Easy ways to control the flow of thoughts!

Updated on March 19, 2016

Thoughts of Osho!

Remain as an observer of your thoughts!

The desire to know everything happening around the world is common among educated people nowadays but they don’t strive to know themselves! This is the paradox of life. People are interested in external world and events. Many rich countries are spending billions of dollars in space exploration. Of course, the desire to explore the outer cosmos is not bad but before that we should investigate what is happening to our earth and ecology. We must know that many billions of people in the third world countries and poor inhabitants of certain African countries are deprived of even one meal a day. They don’t have the money to procure the basic needs of life due to constant draught like situations there. The rulers there are mostly selfish. Hardly one or two leaders are concerned with the plight of the poor there but they could do nothing unless the rich Nations come forward to alleviate the extreme poverty prevailing there.

In this context, Sathya Saibaba has once told the gathering of devotees from many countries that countries are interested in exploring the space, sending rockets and space ships traveling millions of miles in the space. But no country has attempted to travel even an inch in the inner realms of man. The scriptures are very vocal about the aim of human life. They have clearly proclaimed that all the outer phenomena is the results of illusions woven by the unsteady mind. The mind creates the illusion and makes the individual to believe in the existence of the world as such. This is similar to the illusion of ‘snake’ over the coil of rope during twilight hours. There is no sufficient light. Hence the wayfarer on the path visualizes the snake when there is only a rope. The snake is an illusion and the reality is only a rope. This could be ascertained only when a torch light is focused on the spot. The snake is an imagination of the mind and it makes the person to stop with anxiety. The moment light is brought, the person laughs at his ignorance.

This is how God or the Self is hidden behind the phenomena of creation and cosmos. We claim that the Sun is hidden behind the clouds. But after few minutes the Sun is seen through its own illumination. The dark clouds are again the creation of the Sun but they have the audacity to hide their own creator. But this is only a temporary phenomenon and hence they are termed as ‘passing clouds’. In my early student life, I have seen a cigarette called ‘passing show’! This is the apt name given ever to a cigarette pack. In hind sight, I feel that the entire phenomena of the world are also a ‘passing show’. Then why should we bother about the passing show? Every one here is aware of one fact that everything in this world is changing every moment. A man may seem to sit idle on a chair. But his mind is traveling to all corners of the globe. He is day dreaming and visualizing many things in the mind. Hence the arising of each thought in the firmament of the mind is also a movement and change. We are not struck with the same thought all the time! Thoughts flow one after another.

A wise man simply observes the flow of thoughts and he keeps quiet without involving in the thought process. He never judges those thoughts or forms any opinion about them. This is the most ideal way of escaping from the thoughts. Let any kind of thought arise! Be a mute witness without getting entangled in the thoughts. Practice this every time and you will wonder the manifestation of ethereal peace inside you. Yes, slowing of thoughts really gives us bliss like states. Hence some saints recommend, ‘hold on to the interval between one thought and another! When the mind realizes that the individual is not interested any more in its pranks, it will start slowing down.

We have seen babies followed by their mother run hither and thither. The moment, the mother stops pursuing the child, the child cries running to its mother! This is how we must treat the thoughts arising in the mind. Practice and tell me whether this method has helped you?